Roland Hill's biography, A Time Out of Joint, is a remarkable and moving personal story and much more: it enables readers to re-live European history during the darkest period of Nazi Germany and World War II, when traditional European culture and civilization generally seemed to be extinguished, but also to experience the return of peace and a time of hope.

Roland Hill was born in Hamburg in 1920 to prosperity and culture -- his father was a sugar trader and his mother an opera singer. Both were of Jewish descent but had converted to Christianity. But the stable and tolerant world he was born into changed dramatically with Hitler's rise to power in 1933. The family moved to Prague, Vienna and Milan. Austria became Hill's spiritual home where he was received into the Roman Catholic church -- a move which decisively shaped his life - and where he started his journalistic career. Nazi persecution scattered the family and he sought refuge in Britain, totally alone and with only a £5 note, classed simply as a "Refugee from Nazi Persecution". Roland Hill survived the European maelstrom to take a full part in Europe's resurgence and his moving story, full of drama and atmosphere - and based on a unique gift for friendship -- vividly evokes the highs and lows of his remarkable life.

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